The Government Response to Darren Henley's Review of Cultural

CULTURAL EDUCATION IN ENGLAND The Government response to Darren Henley’s Review of Cultural Education Whoever neglects the arts when he is young has lost the past and is dead to the future. Sophocles Learning about our culture and playing an active part in the cultural life of the school and wider communities is as vital to developing our identity and self-esteem as understanding who we are through knowing our history and the origins of our society. Enjoying and participating in cultural life should be available to all children and young people: it must not be restricted to those children whose families already participate in cultural activities. All children and young people no matter what their background or family circumstances should have the opportunity to develop their creativity, their relationship with society and to contribute to the economy in ways that are beneficial to them as individuals and to society. Once again we would like to record our grateful thanks to Darren Henley for his ambitious approach to undertaking a review of this scale across such a divergent sector. His vision for excellence in cultural education, to enable children from all backgrounds and every part of England to have the opportunity to experience and enjoy the best that our unique cultural heritage has to offer, is one that we share. We would also like to express our gratitude to the cultural education sponsored bodies; Arts Council England, British Film Institute, English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund, who have risen the challenges posed in the report and who have found a way to work together to address those challenges. We look forward to continuing to work closely with them, and to their increasing support for schools. The Department for Education is committing £15 million until 2015 to pump prime initiatives that will inspire children and young people and schools to take part in cultural activities to enrich their learning and play their part in helping the cultural arts industries to continue to flourish. However this is not just about creating opportunities; the real and lasting impact only occurs when those opportunities are enjoyable, challenging, of high quality, and when the young people are appropriately supported to achieve. We set out below those issues that we will address immediately. • New joint Ministerial Board • A National Plan for Cultural Education together with the sponsored bodies • Work with Teaching Schools and sponsored bodies to improve the quality of cultural education in schools • A new National Youth Dance Company • National Art & Design Saturday Clubs • Heritage Schools - providing access to local history and cultural heritage 2 • Cultural education passport – so that all children and young people can have a rich variety of cultural education • Museums education – to encourage and facilitate more school visits to museums and art galleries • Film education - to inspire and train the next generation of British filmmakers • The Bridge Network bringing heritage and film as well as arts, museums and libraries closer to every school. We have set out our immediate responses to the review’s recommendations overleaf and will of course develop these further in the National Plan for Cultural Education. Michael Gove Ed Vaizey Secretary of State for Education Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries 3 Recommendation 1: Broad Cultural Education for all children There should be a minimum level of Cultural Education that a child should expect to receive during his or her schooling as a whole. For children to leave full-time education without having engaged in the spectrum of Cultural Education outlined below would be a failure of a system which sets out to create young people who are not only academically able, but also have a fully-rounded appreciation of the world around them. We would encourage schools and colleges to use this vision to help support them in providing a full range of rich cultural experiences for all their students. The 2010 Schools White Paper “The Importance of Teaching” states that children should expect to be given a rich menu of cultural experiences. We will produce a clear statement of the national ambition for cultural education as part of our response to recommendation 3. Recommendation 2: Cross-departmental government co-operation A new cross-Whitehall ministerial group on Cultural Education should be set up, under the chairmanship of the Culture Minister or an Education Minister. The Department for Education and the Department for Culture Media and Sport will establish a new Board to work with sponsored bodies to help them deliver our vision for effective cultural education across the country. Recommendation 3: A New National Plan There is currently no over-arching strategy for the commissioning and delivery of Cultural Education in England. The government should develop a single National Cultural Education Plan. This document should set out its ambitions for children and young people in this area, while ensuring the development of a framework that enables these ambitions to be delivered. We agree. The Departments will work together to develop a National Plan for Cultural Education in consultation with our key partners. This will clearly set out the Government’s aspirations and priorities in this area, and how they are delivered in the context of cultural education, with the particular commitment of the Arts Council England, English Heritage, the British Film Institute and the Heritage Lottery Fund. 4 Recommendation 4: Arms-length Bodies working together as a partnership Arts Council England, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the British Film Institute, the Big Lottery Fund and English Heritage should work together to ensure that their individual strategies/plans in the area of Cultural Education cohere in a way that adds up to a single over-arching strategy in line with the government’s stated ambitions. By coming together as a new Cultural Education Partnership Group, this could ultimately result in a single strategic commissioning fund for Cultural Education in England The Government strongly agrees with this proposal and looks to the organisations named here to build this new working relationship. Partnership working will underpin our vision for the future of Cultural Education and we look forward to developing a new partnership with this group. Recommendation 5: A Cultural Education Passport The CEPG should consider establishing a new Cultural Education Passport scheme for children between the ages of five and nineteen, which records all of their in-school and out of school cultural activities, enabling parents, carers and teachers to understand what each child has achieved and to plug any gaps in knowledge and experience. This would be particularly useful during the transition between primary and secondary schools, where Year 7 pupils may enter a secondary school from a variety of different feeder primaries, each of which has a slightly different programme of Cultural Education. We think this is a valuable proposal and will support its development, in partnership with the Cultural Education Partnership Group. Recommendation 6: A Cultural Education Website A single destination website should be created, bringing all Cultural Education resources together in one easily accessible place online. Improved access to online resources would enable schools and colleges across the country to easily access details of local cultural education opportunities for their students and signpost them to funding opportunities to support them. We look to our sponsored bodies to examine this proposal in more detail and will work them in support of its development through the new Ministerial Board. 5 Recommendation 7: New Local Partnerships In my Review of Music Education, I stressed the importance of partnerships between classroom teachers, specialist music teachers and professional musicians in the delivery of a truly excellent Music Education to young people. To this end, I recommended the creation of a series of Local Music Education Hubs through which funding would be channeled. The government agreed with the recommendation in its response to my Review and the National Plan for Music Education has detailed how these Hubs will operate. Consideration should now be given to rolling a structure out across the rest of the Cultural Education spectrum, to enable meaningful partnerships on the ground across different art forms and using all of the expertise and venues that are available in a given area. This could be achieved through the further development of Arts Council England’s Bridge Organisations, which currently focus on the arts, to include other cultural areas. The Government fully supports the principle of greater partnership working between cultural organisations and schools, such as the effective spread of resources, expertise, and ideas. Local areas may want to build on the work of music education hubs and the Bridge networks across the country. Recommendation 8: Managing Closer Partnerships More can be done - both by cultural organisations and by schools - to foster closer working partnerships. Each primary and secondary school should nominate a member of the Senior Management Team to act as a Cultural Education Champion. All schools should also have a member of the governing body who has a particular responsibility for and interest in cultural education. This would increase with the recruitment of a greater number of school governors from among the creative and cultural industries. This position should be mirrored in cultural organisations, which should themselves be encouraged to appoint a trustee with particular responsibility for and interest in education. One method for building closer ties would be for each school in England to be adopted by a cultural organisation to build meaningful long-term bonds between the two entities. There are many fantastic examples where this partnership is already happening between schools and cultural organisations but it is for the school leadership and governing body to determine how these responsibilities are delegated.

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